Solderless wrapped connections between electrical terminals have become a standard means for wiring equipment such as computers, televisions, commercial communications equipment, and similar electronic apparatus. In a typical manufacturing process, two terminals are connected together with a length of wire to form an electrical connection therebetween. In the usual case, a length of wire is premeasured and prestripped at both ends, and one end of wire is inserted at a time into a wire wrapping tool, which is then placed on the terminal post. The bare wire is then coiled tightly around the post by rotary action of the tool. The wrapping process is repeated for the second end of the wire after the wire is extended to the second terminal. Hand wrapping, although considerably faster than hand soldering, is still relatively expensive, tedious, and time consuming.
For this reason, automatic wire wrapping apparatus have been developed which range in complexity from X-Y position locators capable of achieving approximately 175 wire wraps an hour to fully automatic devices capable of approximately 900 wires per hour. To date, the successful commercial operations capable of fully automatic wire wrapping require the use of multiple wire wrapping heads. Several representative efforts of this area are the machines disclosed in Madden, U.S. Pat. No. 269,656, issued Dec. 14, 1954, and Etchison, et al, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 26,791, issued Feb. 17, 1970. More recently because of the obvious savings, a number of single head wire wrapping machines which accomplish the wrapping of both ends of the wire have been devised. Representative of these efforts are Taysom, et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,435,858, issued Apr. 1, 1969, Staiger, U.S. Pat. No. 3,774,283, issued Nov. 27, 1973, and Fidiam, U.S. Pat. No. 3,895,659, issued July 22, 1975. To date, single headed automatic wire wrapping machines have not proved completely successful for the following reasons: The devices failed to fully control the wire in all phases of the wrapping operation; the wire stripping proved inadequate because of attempts to accomplish it within the confines of the wrapping bit; or the device required the wasteful loss of a portion of the wire during the wire handling sequence in order to insure control. In addition, most of the devices required an extensive loop length between terminals because of their inability to load the wrapping bit close to the terminal without interference of the loading mechanism with the terminal board itself.